What is meditation?How about, before answering that question, I ask one, "What is a human being?"One must first be able to answer this question before entertaining the first...What do you say?Various intellectual, scientific, and religious disciplines will give their answers... but really, what is a human being? I tend towards a playful mysticism because I am honestly comfortable with not needing to pretend that I "know" all that very much... so I tend to enter the realm of Sacred Imagination and go way, w-a-y, back: back before anything: back to the Original Question of "What if?""What if?" required an answer, which was, "Why not?" I follow these sacred imaginings into the words of Simone Weil: "We were created by Love, for Love, to become Love"... and I merge into this: "What if?" in the sudden awakening of Need, pondered "Why not?" which was one-heck-of-an-orgasmic thought: science conveniently calls it the "Big Bang"... "Why not?" was the seed that became energy... became light... became atoms... became all the many manifestations of possibilities... All for the expressed purpose of "What if?" and "Why not?": we were created by Love, for Love, to become Love... In the gathering of the mystics, the silent acceptance of "not knowing" is enough... and when words must be used, they are used sparingly (unlike Scriptures)... a few of the sparse words go something like this: "Love is All", "Love is Enough", "Love needed to forget so She could remember in Us", and "In remembrance we know the Welcome Home"...Perhaps a human being is That! Perhaps we are aspects of the One in the Play of Love, simply for the Delight of Love, and for No Purpose other than an Awakening into Only Love... If even a smidgeon of this is possibly true, that very little bit of truth answers the question of "What is meditation?" Doesn't it?If you want a little extra help, dig out an old Bible... look into the Hebrew Scriptures for the "Song of Songs": don't read it! Instead, caress it with your mind... let the words flow over your skin like the warm waters of the tropics... let the words drip off your tongue like honey you would drip upon the tongue and skin of your lover... let the words seduce your being into the rich possibility that you are -- right now -- infinitely desirable and worth every loving move of the Universe... this is meditation...Meditation is the slow seduction of the mind into the Infinite Possibilities for Being in Love... meditation is the surrender of lover-into-lover... meditation is every kindness and evidence of appreciation and adoration... meditation is awakening into gratitude and the corresponding gift of service... meditation is transformation into the simple bliss of "this moment is perfect for Love"... And yes, like other forms of love-making, there are certain postures and hand movements and means of union that are more or less effective for loving in a particular moment... but it is really all about the mutuality of surrender: this is key: the Divine Love comes to surrender to you... and wants only the mutuality of your complete, open, honest surrender in equal measure... again, this is meditation...Finally, as in love-making, the delight and pleasure of one's partner is equal to one's own delight and pleasure... this, once more, is key: as in love-making, surrender means non-attachment to any desire to possess or control one's partner: loving is always about the liberation of the "other": we discover our own liberation within the liberation of those whom we love-in-liberation... While the word may sound somewhat out of place here, nevertheless it is important because meditation is always about the "other": meditation is the living of "solidarity": "I am You, You are Me, and We are All Together One": the old Dominator Paradigm which has made a science of "use, abuse, and throw away" is being transformed into the New Solidarity Paradigm ("I am You, You are Me, and We are All Together One)... I suppose that one could say that meditation is both the "rEvolution of transformation" and the "Kama Sutra of the Stars and Whirling Galaxies"...

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Robert Daniel Smith was privileged to serve the homeless and marginalized for 30 years in Salinas, California. Together with his wife, Michelle, they founded an intentional community called the 'Companions of the Way', also in Salinas. Robert and Michelle are community organizers, Catholic Worker renegades, sacred activists, writers, poets, artists, Divine Mother devotees, and practitioners of Kriya Yoga as taught by Rev. Ellen Grace O'Brian of the Center for Spiritual Enlightenment. Michelle is also a Montessori public school teacher. Robert is an ordained Interfaith Minister. Together, Robert and Michelle, are founding the Iona House Catholic Worker in River Falls.

​"Currently living in the Midwest, we are imagining and preparing for our next adventure: beginning another intentional community modeled after the Franciscan / Catholic Worker vision, and the Findhorn Community in Scotland, and serving disadvantaged children and youth."

​Might you share our passion for intentional possibilities, for the practice of beauty, and for living lives of deep purpose and a nonviolent kindness?